It's a point often lost on entertainment journalists: Just because people don't want to give interviews doesn't make them hermits. Every so often, for example, people would write that Greta Garbo, J.D. Salinger (or now Terrence Malick) were eccentric recluses.

No, they're not. They just don't want to talk to you.

Still, the loner label has been often hung on Bill Watterson, and unfairly. It's not that he never speaks to the press (in fact, he recently gave an interview to the magazine Mental Floss). It's that, since retiring from drawing "Calvin and Hobbes" 18 years ago, he hasn't had to.

But even though he walked away from the public, his brilliant work hasn't disappeared. People still love, quote, worship that little strip about the over-imaginative towhead and his stuffed tiger. And the new movie "Dear Mr. Watterson" tries to explain why.

What it doesn't do — are you listening, "Salinger"? — is talk to erstwhile friends, or try to waylay its subject at the post office. Instead, it interviews fans of the strip (some famous, most not), other cartoonists and Watterson's editors to get a sense of just how special it was.

On the face of it, it shouldn't have been. Calvin's relationships with his parents, little girls and the neighborhood bully weren't all that different from the ones in "Dennis the Menace" or "Nancy"; even his wild daydreams recalled Snoopy, and the classic "Little Nemo in Slumberland."

But Watterson's art — beautifully reproduced here — was inventive and often gorgeous, particularly in the big Sunday panels. And although, despite those character names, the stories didn't drag in a lot of philosophizing, they did salute imagination, innocence, wonder.

It's lovely to see all of it again, and to be reminded of Watterson's quietly uncompromising ideals. He insisted newspapers reproduce his strip at a decent size, or not at all. He turned down movie offers. He refused to approve any tie-in merchandizing.

He left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table. And why? Because he didn't think it would be right. And when he felt he was beginning to repeat himself — as any artist with daily deadlines will — he put down his brushes and walked away. All of this is interesting — and yes, inspiring — to hear.

Unfortunately, it comes wrapped up in some far too self-involved packaging, as director Joel Allen Schroeder films himself gazing adoringly at his favorite cartoons, or cuts to old snapshots of him looking very Calvin-esque. Schroeder isn't as interesting as his subject — he isn't even very interesting on his subject — and he eats up a lot of screentime.

It's terrific, though, to hear from other cartoonists on the strip (particularly from a wry Berke Breathed, whose own commercializing of "Bloom County" Watterson regularly, gently mocked). Bittersweet to realize that "the Sunday funnies" are just one more thing that wonderful progress seems to be pushing aside.

And truly, truly wonderful to see shots of young new readers picking up the paperback anthologies, and discovering "Calvin and Hobbes" all for themselves. As Calvin himself once exulted, "There's treasure everywhere!" — and as long as we have libraries, it'll be waiting there for new generations to unearth.